A Flavour of Malawi

So for you curious bunnies I thought I would try to give an essence of what it is like over here in the world of the Rift Valley. Well for starters, the geography of Malawi, it is a rather small eastern African country nestled quite snugly between Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania (little fact they pronounce Tanzania Tan-zay-nia) and is mostly dominated by the natural beauty which is Lake Malawi  or Lake Nyasa to locals. Lake Malawi is the worlds 9th largest lake and Africa's 3rd largest. It is also renowned for it's vast array of Cichlids, cute little colourful fish which occur in a greater variety of species here than anywhere else in the world. So it already sounds pretty great right?

Another fact I like about Malawi is that where we're situated in Mzuzu, is 4183 feet above sea level (around the height of Ben Nevis :O ) whereas the lake lies around 1500 feet. SO when we go for trips down to the shore we have a lot of downhill to cover!

Other than the bare facts about the place which already make it a naturally and ecologically varied place, is the incredible human element to the country. I have found that many Malawians speak English which makes travelling around and buying things relatively easy, they love to laugh and most definitely quick to get a good bargain for things. The general backward ways of Africa are of course present along with some amusing characteristics such as never appearing to fix cars so if you're daring enough to drive at night (and barely any cars have fully functioning headlights) the way to be seen is to put your indicator on so oncoming traffic can see you, mad right! The overladen lorries also make me chuckle trucks filled with god knows what piled high with people perched on top crawling its way up the hill and taking up the entire narrow roads blowing smoke and making a racket. Bumpy dirt roads, waving children, clay brick houses and fishermen in dug outs all go a small way to give picture of what it is like here.

What I like most is the incredible diversity of this place, the lushness of the lakeside with the easy supply of water and fish, the extensive forests and the rolling hills, the high plateaus and low valley bottoms, the beautiful lodges and traditional food. It is a place of many differences there are rich and poor areas, the rich live in brick house with tin roofs with walls surrounding and the poor live in small brick huts in little road side villages selling things like bananas, reed fencing and charcoal. You can buy so much here (last time I was here I was convinced I put on weight we got through so much food), people even come to the window if you're sitting in the car and offer you bananas, tomatoes, carrots anything.

So far we have been to places like Vwaza and Liwonde parks (oh the elephants!!!) Salima, Karonga, Nkhata Bay (this is where to get touristy items such as carved elephant, necklaces, figurines etc), Chinteche and Lilongwe but there are still many more places to go and so much I could say about this small but characteristic place. So many many more things to see about the weird, wonderful and downright barmy things that make up Malawi, but the only way to truly know what I am on about is to come here for yourselves.

Keep a look out for a bit more as we are going to Nyika next week a national park set high up on a plateau and is well known for birds (as is most of Malawi) grazing animals and the flora.


I highly recommend Malawi and it has made me eager to see the rest of Africa and learn their characters and taste their flavours now that this Msungu (foreigner, white person) knows her way around this little part of the continent, the rest becomes ever more enticing.

Click on this picture to see a selection of photographs from Malawi to see just how beautiful it is here